This time it is almost true. Then the ladies take off their gaiters, hand the watering-pots to their mothers, to their chamber-maids, or to the persons who combine these two offices, and with much strutting and muscular mannerism direct their steps toward the stage.
Those who enjoy the privilege of the entry to the foyer of the opera are the subscribers, the Ministers, influential journalists, and a few other persons whom it pleases the director to gratify. All rich folk, you may be sure, for unless you are rich you cannot be an habitue of the opera. As Hector Berlioz used to say, “Music is essentially aristocratic, a girl of noble lineage, that princes alone can endow nowadays.”
How Divided.
And now let me say a few words about the ladies of the ballet. They are divided into premiers, sujets, coryphees, figurants and comparses. I maintain the French terms for the simple reason that there are no Anglo-Saxon equivalents.
The corps de ballet, like an army corps, is composed of platoons, divided first of all according to the sexes, and then into quadrilles, first and second. The pay in the second quadrille is 700 to 800 francs a year; in the first, 900 to 1,000 francs; a coryphee gets 1,200, 1,300, or 1,400 francs. The next stage is sujet, with an engagement of three years and a salary beginning at 1,600 francs and increasing up to 2,000 francs in the last year.
These are the stages through which the members of the ballet of the opera pass. And what a hard time they have! Take, for instance, the coryphees and the members of the two quadrilles. They arrive at the opera, say a quarter to 9 in the morning, each armed with a leather bag, containing a pair of stockings, some dancing shoes, a corset, a chimisette, a comb, a hand mirror, a button hook, a box of face powder, a piece of bread, two sardines, some potatoes, and a bottle containing more water than wine.
Each one climbs up to the fifth story and enters a room, where her comrades of the quadrille are dressing. In five minutes she has put on her class costume—low necked chimisette, with short sleeves, muslin skirt, rose-colored stockings, shabby satin shoes, a blue ribbon round her neck, and in her corset a bunch of brass medals, a piece of red coral, and two little crosses. These are her fetiches. No danseuse who respects herself can do anything without her fetiches or lucky charms.
Up two more flights of stairs, she arrives in the large square instruction room under the cupola, with the floor slightly inclined to reproduce the slope of the stage. The only furniture is a chair for the teacher, Mme. Merante, a chair for the violin player, Francois Merante, and all around the room bars such as we have already seen in the foyer de la danse.
“Take your places, young ladies!” cries Mme. Merante. The girls place themselves at the bar, and holding it now with the right hand and now with the left, twist and dislocate their bodies in every possible fashion. This is only a preparation for the lesson proper. After these exercises, the teacher calls the pupils into the middle of the room, and then begin the figures and pirouettes. If our heroine is ambitious, she will not be content with the lesson alone, but undertake in a corner by herself a number of intricate and peculiar dislocations during the intervals of repose.
The lesson is over. It is 11 o’clock. The girls hurry to their dressing-rooms to change their linen, after which they breakfast in company on sardines, radishes, sour apples, gossip and fried potatoes. At noon the bell rings for rehearsal. The girls have to come down on the stage, and finish their breakfast while the stage manager calls out the names and the ballet master talks to the composer. The rehearsal drags along until 4 o’clock. Then the girls climb up again to their dressing-room, put on their ordinary clothing, and leave the theatre.